We've just finished back-to-back years of employee referrals accounting for 75% or more of all external hires. This has caused me to do a little reflection on our progress, where we are and where we are going with this powerful recruiting strategy.
The background: AmTrust Bank grew its program from 28% of hires in 2006 to 78% in 2008 and continued the success by sourcing 75% of our hires through employee referrals in fiscal 2009. We increased our reliance on this source over time as we continued to validate that employee referrals stay longer and cost less than hires from other sources. Although, as we planned sourcing strategies for fiscal 2009 we knew the year was going to be a tough one.
The bad news: as we started the fiscal year in October 2008 the economy was a mess, the employed were not inclined to change jobs during such uncertain times and candidates were increasingly wary of joining the struggling financial industry. Not an easy time to be a recruiter.
The good news: we had a strong corporate culture, an engaged workforce and the momentum of our employee referral program. Our internal employee communications team did a great job of sharing positive stories, which our employees could easily incorporate into conversation with family, friends and others in the community. The employment brand, as facilitated every day by our employees, confirmed that this was a great place to work!
The reality: we would have to keep the program moving forward without the overt in-your-face internal marketing and generous budget we utilized in the past. We suspended our monthly participation prizes and annual $5000 grand prize and toned down the "fun" aspects of the program. Without all of this, we needed a new approach.
The new marketing approach: a no-nonsense-no-fluff-micro-level strategy. No more asking employees for all the referrals they could find. We featured intranet articles describing specific jobs we were recruiting for and only asked for referrals for those jobs. We directly solicited top performers and recent hires from targeted companies to ask for referrals and encouraged employees to utilize linkedin, facebook and twitter as a means to reach out to top talent in their networks. The focus became one of business necessity: we need great people, we need your help, and sourcing talent this way has proven results for the organization! In retrospect, without the strength of our employee driven employment branding and the momentum of our employee referral program, we would not have been able to offset the bad news and fill open positions as easily.
The future: we know we cannot rest on our past success and that we will need to be even more creative with our program to keep it fresh, relevant, and impactful. We must continue to upgrade our message and means of encouraging employee participation, as well as find new ways to recognize/reward employees for their efforts. We continue to listen to and learn from industry experts and other companies about their program success and have significant program upgrades planned for fiscal 2010. We do expect similar results in the future and are excited about proving that this level of program success is sustainable for years to come.
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